What is This Ameraucana-ish Thing?

[The Monkey Mama]

Bought some eggs off eBay that were supposed to be some purebred Ameraucanas and some purebred Auracanas from show winners. I bought 18, the extremely nice seller sent me 24. 21 of them were fertile and growing until I had an incubator catastrophe that killed all but 6 of them.

The 6 that hatched out are ... interesting. I have two that are beautiful - a blue and a wheaten - but they have no face muffs or anything, so they obviously aren't Ameraucana. [They do have tails though].

Then I have two that appear to be sort of Auracanas - one black and one wheaten barred in a weird pattern. They have no tails, but they also don't have face tufts, so they can't be purebreds either, right?

Then I have this guy below. He has a tail but also has face tufts. He is an odd looking little fellow, and appears to be a boy [which is a shame, if he was a girl I'd use him for laying since I can't breed him, but as a roo he's really not good for anything but eating....]

What would you call this guy?

It seems that all of these are just mutts, so I guess "Easter Eggers" would be the correct name?

I'm so frustrated. I'm trying to build up some nice stock of blue and wheaten Ameraucanas to breed [I have some hens already that are adults now and are beautiful and meet the standards - but I need an unrelated roo for them!].

I don't think these little guys are gonna help any though - I think I have a bunch of mutts here.

Oh well - so it goes with eBay right?!

[No sour grapes, I knew it was iffy when I bought off eBay anyway

]

Kelly

 

[hatchaholic]

I did the same thing...bought them on ebay, supposed to be "pure ameracaunas." Well, they are due to hatch Friday, so we'll see.

I don't plan to show mine, so I don't mind if they are mixed colors. I just want them to lay blue eggs.

But, I do wish that people who are selling EE's will advertise them as what they are. I've already decided that in the future, if I want true ameracaunas, I'll try to buy them from a BYC'er.

 

[pips&peeps]

I've got cockerels coming out the yah hoo......

 

[Buff Hooligans]

It's definitely a Velociraptor.

 

[The Monkey Mama]

LOL! Velociraptor...that was my first guess too!

Jean, I wish I lived closer to you, I'd come buy a good cockeral from you! Do you sell hatching eggs? I need someone reputable to buy from!

Kimbpara, I have some Easter Eggers too, and I love them [one of my very favorite hens is an Easter Egger], but for breeding I was trying to get only pure breds who meet the color standards, and I was trying to breed blues and wheatens specifically. I don't want to breed my "mutts" at this time, no matter how much I love 'em! LOL!

Thanks for the info guys!

Kelly

 

[klf73]

The thing about araucana is not many hatch looking "true". I have a LOT of clean faced/tailed araucana running around, a couple tufted/tailed and only 2 tufted/rumpless that I hatched from 6 batches from 5 breeders, all with true araucanas. Can you pm me the seller's name and I may be able to tell you if they have "true" araucana or not.......a couple of the people I got mine from sell over there.....

 

[poultrykeeper08]

the one you have in the pic seems to be a tailed ,tufted araucana to m

I pM'd you

 

[hinkjc]

Looks like an araucana to me. They do not all hatch with tufts and they do not all hatch rumpless..just the nature of the genetics for the breed. Even show quality stock does not always produce show quality chicks. I'd recommend doing some research to understand the breed better. This is probably the most challenging breed to perfect, but if you start with a tufted tailed bird and match it to a clean faced rumpless bird, you are on your way.

Jody

 

[LilPeeps]

I agree with Jody.

 

[The Monkey Mama]

I'm not actually interested in breeding Araucanas [not big on breeding anything with lethal genes, I don't do well when they don't make it

].

It was the Ameraucanas I was interested in, and I'm looking specifically for a quality blue or wheaten Roo for my existing hens.

klf73, I don't want to spread the seller's name around because in all honestly this could be totally my fault - I had 21 fertile eggs and killed all but 6 with a huge temp spike. It could be that the "mixes" are the only ones that were strong enough to survive that - it could very well be that I had 15 pure bred, beautiful, perfect little other chicks who didn't survive [since crosses are supposed to be more hardy?].

Anyway, without knowing if it was ME causing the problem, I don't want to put any shadow on the seller - the seller was extremely nice and helpful.

Hope that makes sense.

I was just curious as to what people thought about this one strange little guy - it doesn't really matter to me if these are pure breds that look funky or not because none of them match what I'm looking to breed, so they are going to be egg layers and/or dinner.

Thanks so much for the opinions and advice [public and private]. I really appreciate it.

Kelly